In 1962, Barbara Tuchman published the masterpiece, THE GUNS OF AUGUST; about how, in August, 1914, dumb leadership in Europe plunged Western Civilization into one of the dumbest wars in History.
WORLD WAR I, in which the civilized nations of Western Europe, the nations of Tolstoy and Chekhov, Nijinsky and Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, Schiller and Shakespeare, Goethe and Michelangelo, Moliere and Monet, Pasteur and Newton, Galileo and Lister gave themselves up and over to a moronic war.
What is a moronic war?
It is a war fought not for Greed, nor Empire, nor Defense nor Expanse, nor Opium Trade, nor Land, nor Defining a Border, nor Irredentism, nor Revanchism, nor Ideology, nor Meanness, nor Independence, nor Religion, nor Genocide, nor to end Slavery, nor Revolution; a moronic war is a war fought for no reason, no good reason, no logical reason, no bad reason, no evil reason. It is a war fought only because decision making has been suspended, not just good decision making, but all decision making, good, bad and evil decision making. Good men do not fight moronic wars; bad men do not fight moronic wars; evil men do not fight moronic wars, only morons in Leadership fight moronic wars.
In the course of recorded history there have been four moronic wars: 1) Athens in Greece attacking Syracuse in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. 2) The War of Jenkins’ Ear, in which England went to war because some Spaniard cut off Jenkins’ Ear, 3) The American Invasion of Iraq-2003. But the Mother of all Moronic Wars is World War I.
The bookkeeping of the Moronic World War I is staggeringly depressing; ancient empires which bought a stuffy stability to the civilized world collapsed. The Russian Empire of the Romanovs, the Hapsburg Empire, the Hohenzollern Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, the order of 1,000 years was swept away in a lunacy of non leadership.
Why would Western Civilization, perhaps at the peak of its civilization, bumble into carnage?
The following are theories espoused to this Blogger in the course of his exploration of the Causes of World War I.
1) The French Theory of Institutional Perfection- in French military strategic circles there is a belief that institutions reach their institutional perfection right before their collapse. Collapse occurs not from entropy per se but from perfection achieved and squandered. In 1914, the aristocracies of Western Europe reached a level of perfection never achieved before; they had their privileges confirmed and supported by their working classes. Even in Russia when Czar Nicholas II took the Romanov Tercentennial tour, the oppressed Russian workers and peasants came out in droves to yell, “LONG LIVE THE CZAR”. Lenin was so depressed he wanted to give up the Revolution. The perfect system of aristocracy reached its apex and then opted for war to destroy itself. Perfection breeds self destruction.
2) The Eric Hoffer Bling Theory- One of the great philosophers of the 20th Century was the stevedore-philosopher Eric Hoffer; after my first trip to the Soviet Union, we had a long discussion. In that discussion, we touched on the Causes of World War I. Mr. Hoffer was a Jungian in the best sense of the word. He believed that World War I was caused by the dazzling uniforms worn by every male in the antebellum World War I world. He believed that the men of pre-1914 world wanted an arena to show that they could live up to their dazzling uniforms, ergo-the war was caused by men trying to live up to their Bling. This Blogger dismissed that concept when he first heard it, but later it gained credence when this Blogger read that Sigmund Freud considered the best time of his life was when he was on mandatory summer maneuvers with the Austro-Hungarian Army. Even the Freudian loved the Jungian uniforms.
3) The Catholic Fanatic Theory- There was a gentleman who dedicated his adult life to fighting the Soviet Union in the Twilight War of the Cold War; after he retired he became a Catholic Brother working with the poor in some ghetto. He believed that World War I was preordained, because the Three Secrets of Fatima included references to World War I. He considered the leaders of the pre-1914 Europe as puppets in the dance of death orchestrated by Death; he compared those leaders to the characters locked into the Dance of Death in Ingmar Bergman’s film, THE SEVENTH SEAL.
4 ) The Trotskyite Theory-Within the dark, dank recesses of the dialectic there is a quirky, curious, bastardized mutant logic. That freak of nature mentality is this: ”It has value because it has no value.” That means this: some actions, some events have value because they have no rational, logical, measurable, quantitative value, which means that the true value of the event is A TEST OF WILL. The Trotskyites who mentored me in Brooklyn believed World War I was started by a series of events that in and of themselves had no value; Trotskyites believe that the Western World was sent cascading into decline by a test of wills which had no value above being a test of wills.
THE MAXEY THEORY-This Blogger believes in his own theory, the Theory Communal Dementia as applied to all the Leaders of Europe. The mutual decisions which led Western Europe into World War I , in my opinion, was a 2th Century manifestation of the St. Vitus Dance Mania. “St. Vitus' Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children, who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, Germany, in 1374, …Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event,….it is thought to be as a mass psychogenic illness in which the occurrence of similar physical symptoms, with no known physical cause, affect a large group of people as a form of social influence.”
It is the considered opinion of this Blogger that World War I was a mass psychogenic illness which affected the Ruling Classes in all the Great Powers. In our lives, America has seen such a mass psychogenic illness in its Ruling Class, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. It made no sense to invade Iraq, it also made no sense to place Paul Bremer in as satrap (no one knows who gave the order to make Bremer satrap, George W. Bush and Cheney both denied they were responsible), the decision to DeBaathize Iraq to the point of firing college professors, to the decision to disband the Iraqi Army without money but with guns and finally the decision to give the nation of Iraq to Nouri al-Maliki( No American Leader had heard of al-Maliki when they offered him the Prime Minister ship; al-Maliki was shocked he was offered the position, and for months the American Ruling class did not know how to spell his first name correctly). That is mass psychogenic illness.
World War I produced innovative war machines, the tank, air warfare, chemical warfare, and submarine warfare. What World War I, amazingly, contrary to all history, did not produce was a great General. The pre-1914 aristocrats produced hordes of brave soldiers, NCOS and junior officers and HORRIBLE GENERALS, Generals worthy of MONTY PYTHON.
The most shocking historical tidbit of World War I is this- not one General worth a damn was produced.
As for the political Leadership, imagine if you will every combatant power under the rule of their own immature, feckless George W. Bush. It can be argued that World War I was caused by every leader in Western Civilization being a George W. Bush clone, simultaneously.
RUSSIA-
No nation suffered more from World War I than Holy Mother Russia. It suffered Stupidity, Men being sent into battle without guns (the soldier behind the soldier shot dead was suppose to pick up the dead man’s gun), Corruption, Rasputin, Revolution, Civil War, the bloody sloppy slaughter of the Royal Family in a dank basement, Famine, Leninism, Famine, Terror, and Stalinism, all because Czar Nicholas II Romanov was the George W. Bush of his time.
On this Blogger's trip to the Soviet Union, he had dinner with my brother, and our assigned tour guide tour Gleb (a KGB agent). It was a great dinner, esoteric.
They discussed World War I and the fall of the Romanovs.
Gleb (his nom de guerre) was an ardent Marxist (he is now an ardent Russian Orthodox), and he was a devout believer in the Leninist Theory of Cadre History; the cadre is everything.
This Blogger's brother made a seemingly casual remark about how much the Russian peasants suffered during World War I, and how the Romanov dynasty could not recover from the bitterness of their casualties at their hands of the incompetent Czarist Generals.
Gleb took a drunken offense at this Blogger's brother’s remark: “peasants are nothing; they can be replaced. The Romanovs lost their divine Right because they did not protect their cadres; by 1915, everyone knew the war was lost. That is when the Romanovs should have pulled from the front lines their trained cadres of aristocratic Captains and Lieutenants, the true spine of the monarchy. Instead they let the young aristocrats continue to be slaughtered until there were no young brave bulls left to defend the monarchy from Bolsheviks. The key mistake of the Romanovs is that they dissipated their cadre of supporters. By the time we attacked the Winter Palace, Kerensky and his Liberal Democrats was dependent on women troops.” (See the scenes in DR. ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternak concerning the collapse of the Russian Army).
The Russian soldier was very brave; his Generals were pathetic. However, Russia did produce the one World War I General with integrity, General Alexander Samsonov. After a horrific defeat at the hands of the Germans at the Battle of Tannenburg, he had the good grace to commit suicide.
Total Russian casualties in World War I-9,150,000.
FRANCE-
No nation sacrificed more than the Third French Republic.
The French soldiers of World War I, the Poilus, were indefatigably and incessantly brave; the last flowering of Napoleonic glory. Their leadership was mad. The French General Staff developed a concept that personal bravery, élan, could overcome everything, every tactical or strategic shortcoming. They took the brave poilu and hurled him against machine guns to prove their theory, again and again. Finally the stress of following mad orders broke the poilus, and they mutinied. This nervous breakdown in the courage of the individual French soldier carried over through World War II. In fact one can say the French Army is still suffering from PTSD, perhaps permanently. (See Stanley Kubrick/Kirk Douglas’ film masterpiece, PATHS OF GLORY).
Finally, to win the war and calm the mutinous troops, the French Leadership turned to a 76 year old rotten bugger who hated Germans. They turned to the most uncivilized man in France to win the war, Georges Clemenceau, "The Tiger". He won the war for France, but his abiding hatred for Germany, sowed the seeds for World War II.
Total French casualties in World War I- 6,160,800.
GERMANY-
Of all the George W. Bushes running the governments of pre-1914 Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm II was the most Dick Cheney. Like Dick Cheney, he was a personal coward who adored the theater of war. Like Bush, he became easily detached from the details of war.
He inherited the best army in the world; the most vital economy in the world, the most cohesive nation in the world.
During his reign, the finest Army in the world became prone to strangeness; one of its leading Generals croaked dressed in a tutu, in front of the General Staff, while dancing the ballerina’s role in an amateur ballet.
Arguably the leading German General of the war was a general who died before the war-Count Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913). Understanding Germany’s greatest fear was the fear of a two front war, France on the West and Russia on the East, von Schlieffen conceived the Schlieffen Plan, to knock out France in the earliest stages of the war by hurling every available German soldier at the Western Front, leaving a threadbare force to counter the Russians. Then, after France was finished, to move his troops East to finish up Russia.
To do that, he envisioned a great sweep, violating Belgian neutrality. He stressed OVER AND OVER again, leave the West wing intact and powerful.
Alas, for Germany, the great von Schlieffen died in 1913; in 1914 when the war began, the German General Staff and the Kaiser became weak in their resolve and belief in the Plan. They shifted troops east, from France, to defend the Eastern Front, basically making the Plan a failure from the beginning.
The German Western Armies became so weakened they failed to knock out the French, thereby making World War I a LONG WAR.
Germany lost the war the minute they began shifting troops East(see Barbara Tuchman’s masterpiece, THE GUNS OF AUGUST).
During the middle of the war, the Kaiser became overwhelmed by the war, and turned over running Germany to the German General Staff.
Erich Ludendorff, the general who won the battle which caused General Sasmsonov’s suicide, became the defacto ruler of Germany.
His solution to winning the war was by exercise of will, hurl the German Army against the trenches of the French and British, and win it by will. Very Napoleonic at Waterloo.
Germany had great logistics and no imagination, and lost the war.
At the end of World War I, Germany was exhausted, and disillusioned because its great savior, General Erich Ludendorff had not delivered victory. In power, he had shown himself as dull witted as all the other World War I generals, only capable of throwing good men against machine guns.
Total German casualties in World War I- 7,142,558.
ITALY-
Before the war, Italy was allied with Germany; during the war, Britain offered Italy greater spoils, so Italy turned coat.
Italy fought eleven battles with Austria-Hungary, the ELEVEN Battles of Isonzo. on the exact same spot, a narrow mountainous pass. The 12th Battle of Isonzo was so disastrous for Italy, it got its own name, The Battle of Caporetto(see Hemingway’s A FAREWELL TO ARMS).
Italy never recovered its equilibrium after the defeat at Caporetto and slid into Mussolini’s Fascism (which promised military victories).
Total Italian casualties in World War I- 2,197,000. In the battle of Caporetto, Italy lost more men than America did, on both sides, during its Civil War.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY-
The Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire lost everything; for one thousand years it presided over Central Europe, a relatively benign, civilized, polyglot empire.
The Emperor Franz Joseph was 84 when his heir apparent was assassinated, starting the chain of events which led to World War I.
Its collapse led to a warren of new nation states, who spent most of their existence in devolution and dismemberment, in an uncivilized manner (see Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia).
Total Austria-Hungarian casualties in World War I- 6,340,000.
OTTOMAN EMPIRE-
The Ottoman Empire, Turkey, lost its empire, all its Arab lands.
It did produce the best General of World War I, Mustafa Kemal, known for defeating the British/Australians at Gallipoli by telling his troops:“I am not ordering you to fight; I am ordering you to die”.
The defeat of the British/Australian Expeditionary Force sealed the doom of the Romanovs, for it meant that Britain could not resupply Russia through the Black Sea.
Total Ottoman casualties in World War I- 975,000.
UNITED STATES
Toward the end of the war, the US supplied cannon fodder for the Allies on the Western Front; The American Commander “Black Jack” Pershing was a mediocre General, a la Mark Clark.
The American war effort produced a great song, OVER THERE by George M. Cohan, a tragic hero- the son of President Teddy Roosevelt killed in battle, a Christian hero, Alvin York, a great Divisional Commander, Douglas MacArthur, and a great battlefield leader, Harry Truman(who got all his troops home alive).
The American War Effort produced just enough greatness to justify itself (see King Vidor’s THE BIG PARADE).
Total American casualties in World War I- 323,018.
The UNITED KINGDOM-
British soldiers are historically the best warriors extant; and historically, the British Ruling Class has always been able to throw up a great General to lead them, Richard the Lion Heart, the Black Prince, Henry V, Cromwell, Marlborough, and Wellington. But not in World War I. World War I produced the worst Generalship in British history, Sir John French, Lord Kitchener, and Lord Haig.
The British had terrible generalship at the beginning of the War, and by the end of the war the same terrible generals were still in place. The first clues that British Leadership in the Edwardian Age was ossified occurred in 1912; both the Captain of the Titanic, Captain Smith and Captain Robert Falcon Scott of Antarctica were brave nincompoops. By lack of leadership, both Smith and Scott lost as many people as possible in their endeavors. That lack of leadership in the British Ruling Class carried over to World War I in 1914.
A Prussian General said it best,” The British soldiers were lions led by donkeys.”
The British War Effort did, on the Eastern Front, produce Allenby, but he was a McClellan; and Lawrence of Arabia, a flashy Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The British War Effort produced no Winfield Scotts, nor Robert E. Lees, nor William Tecumseh Shermans, nor Dwight Eisenhowers, nor George Pattons, nor Douglas MacArthurs. Their leadership well had run dry.
Their political leadership was no better; their original Prime Minister was so passive he merely concurred on a war that would kill millions. Then, after the loss of his son in battle, he became a weeping cipher. The Great War Lord, Winston Churchill was betrayed by timid and inept generals and admirals at Gallipoli, and forced into disgrace.
The other war lord was David Lloyd George, perhaps the strangest man ever to become Prime Minister of Britain, and that is saying something. One hundred years later, Lloyd George is still noted for being “The Goat”, for sleeping with every ugly woman he could find.
Why ugly women?
Because to quote the PM: “They are so very grateful.”
Only one thing saved the British war effort, the resilience, stubbornness, Grace of the British people. They would not be defeated.
Surrounded by incompetent generals, timid admirals and strange politicians, they resolved, en masse, to win the war, because they were in the war.
They won the war by inventing the tank, thereby breaking the deadlock on the Western Front, finally bringing Germany to heel.
Ludendorff could not throw his German soldiers against tanks and win; he himself finally realized that, and sought an armistice, ending World War I.
British males were decimated by World War I; a whole generation of British women were denied husbands by the war, ergo the rise of Virginia Wolfe lesbianism.
To paraphrase Faulkner, the past is never dead; it is never even past. One can see World War I, every time one watches the film AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr; Mr. Grant's grandmother is played by Cathleen Nesbitt; she was the lover of the great English poet Rupert Brooke, “who wrote love sonnets to her. They were engaged to be married when he died during World War I.”
CATHLEEN NESBITT and RUPERT BROOKE
World War I was the saddest human experience ever caused by Man, not the most evil but the saddest. From its sadness sprang Nihilism which gave the world the following: Genocide, Stalinism, Fascism, and Nazism.
Total casualties for World War I- 37, 466,904(57.5% of all the men who served.)
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